By Nate Raymond
BOSTON (Reuters) – U.S. authorities on Friday arrested a Turkish author and her 17-year-old son wanted by Turkey on charges that he was involved in a fatal car crash in Istanbul and then fled the country with the help of your mother.
Turkish novelist and poet Eylem Tok and her son, Timur Cihantimur, are scheduled to appear in Boston federal court following their arrest following an extradition request from Turkey.
Their arrests were announced on social media platform X by Turkish Justice Minister Yilmaz Tunc, who said they were “captured in the United States in accordance with our extradition request.”
Their arrests came after Interpol last month granted Turkey’s request to issue a red alert for Tok and his son. A red notice is a request to law enforcement officials to locate and provisionally arrest a person pending extradition.
Defense attorneys did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
According to prosecutors, the teenager was driving a Porsche on the night of March 1 when, as he turned a corner at high speed, he collided with a group of people with all-terrain vehicles. One person, Oguz Murat Aci, died and four others were injured.
Prosecutors said the teen immediately fled the scene after saying something like “my life is over.” Airport surveillance footage captured him and his mother at an Egyptair ticket office three hours later, prosecutors said.
Tok bought both one-way tickets for a flight from Istanbul to Cairo, Egypt, and they headed to the United States, landing in New York on March 2, according to court documents.
(Reporting by Nate Raymond in Boston and Tuvan Gumrukcu in Ankara; writing by Burcu Karakas; editing by Andrew Heavens)
